It was at a recent press conference attended by representatives of Catholic groups from around the world. Members of the Irish media quizzed clergy and lay people at the top table.
All went off pleasantly as questions were answered directly and well, without any attempt at skewing content or spinning its worth. When it was over, it was to the surprise of an Australian Catholic present.
Rising to leave, he commented to us in the media, “That was very civilised. I had heard you guys were reptiles.” In order to assuage him of what may also have been some disappointment on his part, we assured him we could be very reptilian indeed should there be just cause.
I cited chapter and verse. It seemed unfair that such a hard-earned reputation by Irish media in interrogating Catholic Church representatives on various scandals, might now be put at risk by our seemingly reasonable demeanour at that press conference. And all because we had responded with good manners to fair questions well-answered.
It had taken years of bruising encounters to mould Church representatives into providing the information we were seeking. But they were slow learners, and they do not like us Dr Fell.
Emerging from one torrid press conference involving Irish bishops and Irish media at the Vatican in 2010, “one” was confronted by a bishop who pronounced, “Ah there he is, asking the hard question again and again and again.”
Taken aback, and having assumed hostilities had ceased with the press conference, one replied “. . . that is because I don’t get an answer, again and again and again”. To which said bishop responded: “No, no, no. It’s because you don’t get the answer that you want!”
One walked off, proud to be a reptile and reptilian, and determined to remain so in ongoing dealings with such incorrigible men.
Reptile, from the 14th-century Old French meaning a "creeping or crawling animal", derived directly from the Latin reptile. First used as an insult when applied to a person in Henry Fielding's 1749 novel Tom Jones where he says that "for a little reptile of a critic to presume to find fault with any of its parts . . . is a most presumptuous absurdity".
Where many in the Catholic church have been concerned, we in the media have been little more than a mere “presumptuous absurdity”. inaword@irishtimes.com
